Contact: Dan Dempsey at dempsey_dan@yahoo.com .......
The Math Underground is part of a national coalition, originated by NYC HOLD. .. a coalition of groups of citizens NOT vested in continually reinventing the wheel in order to justify our own existence, jobs or expertise. ........ Check the Blog list for Seattle Math Group.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

NWEA's MAP testing and the Seattle Schools

The Seattle Schools Superintendent sits on the board of NWEA the outfit that produces the MAP test, which the Seattle Schools give three times per year for a "formative" assessment. note NWEA gets paid plenty for providing this test 3 times per year.

NWEA via MAP spews out about a 1,000 objectives per student for the teacher to use "formatively". What a laugh. ... consider the following for grade two....

A Seattle grade two teacher notes the following:

A).. Teachers have been told that MAP is a formative assessment and that it is to be used to guide instruction. I have in my hand the MAP data for one single student in my second grade class. It contains 24 pages of goals. The first column has 318 objectives to reinforce with this student. The second column contains 340 more skills and concepts to develop with this child. And the third column has 320 more skills and concepts I am to introduce to her. With 28 students in a classroom, clearly, this use of MAP simply does not pass the straight face test.

B).. As you know, teachers are required to teach second grade standards to second graders. These MAP results often set goals far beyond second grade. I will close by reading from this list and you can judge for yourself whether these are appropriate goals for a second grade student, who, according to classroom assessments, is already being sufficiently challenged by second grade standards.

a. “Adds fractions with like denominators with reducing or converting to a mixed fraction”

b. “Adds decimals through the hundred-thousandths place”

c. “Multiplies integers with unlike signs”

d. “Subtracts numbers with 5 digits or more with regrouping”

e. “Divides integers with unlike signs”

f. “Divides a 2 digit number or a 3 digit number by a 1 digit number with a remainder"

11 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Maria's conflict of interest is not violating any Washington state laws. Just because its unethical doesn't mean a thing. If you are going to accuse one superintendent, then you might as well accuse all of them. Sitting on the board of the NWEA is a perk - they should at least get paid as much as the bank and realty executives that get paid buying and selling land.

Maria is probably using the inverse law of testing - the least discriminating test is also the dumbest and most expensive test so then all kids can look more successful on paper, no matter how stupid teachers are. The first law of reform says all teachers are born stupid that's why they became 'educators?'

The dumbest part of this reform is, you know the teachers and the parents that have an 'in' are passing around copies of the tests to make themselves look 'less' stupid. So what does that make everyone? A lying dumb a..?

How do we revolutionize classrooms?a. make more tests. b. stop reading.c. play videogamesd. learn how to type with two fingers. e. learn powerpoint.f. shame the sinners into becoming good citizens.g. teach linear regression instead of algebra.h. extort large quantities of money from taxpayers.

Jeff from Peoria, Illinois, here. We give the MAP three times a year in all of our public schools. Funny, I was looking at the materials from the NWEA corporation. On the sample questions they provide, there are grammatical errors . . . unintentional grammatical errors. I pointed this out when our district first purchased the test . . . to no avail.

So I wonder . . . if the questions themselves have grammatical errors in them . . . how accurate can this test possibly be???